STALKER: Loners of Yantar
by Gretch Goodwin
Summary: Things changed after the Blowout. Some for the better, some not so much. But for the men who live and die by the Zone, who work and don't play games with politics, it really was business as usual; fighting, suffering, death, as usual, and in the end the Zone will take us all.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This particular story is an AU setting; the Brain Scorcher re-activated following the events of SoC

 **Loners of Yantar**

 _I._

The old man in the black suit sat away from the burn barrel, the rookies in their ridiculous leather jackets giving him their backs as they strummed their guitars and smoked their cigarettes and drank their cheap watery vodka. The old man didn't care; he preferred to go unnoticed; going unnoticed was how he'd managed to stay alive as long as he had. With the rookies safely ignoring him, his swag-bag tucked safely between his back and the wall of a ruined house, he lit a smoke, fumbled for a can of beans, relaxed, with the intention of eating dinner and catching some much-needed sleep. He'd just pushed aside his cigarette and shoveled the first spoonful of cold beans in his mouth when, out of the blue, one of the rookies turned around and said, "Hey, grandfather, come over here and join us!"

"Not your grandfather, boy," he grumbled, "and why would I want to sit with a bunch of bright-eyed greenhorns anyways?" But a voice in his head told him, _Wolf would've joined them._ He pulled himself to his feet and walked over.

One of the rookies handed him a bottle of vodka to go with his dinner and said, "They say that old men don't last long in the Zone unless it was the Zone that made them old. Tell us something, grandfather."

"What do you want to know?"

The younger man shrugged. "Heard anything interesting lately? Know anything that might be useful to a rookie?"

"Yes, and yes. I've been at this for a good long while, tovarisch. What kind of ghost stories do the little boys want to hear around their campfire tonight?"

One of them, one of the younger ones, perked up and said, "Tell us about Strelok!"

He rolled his eyes. "Strelok. The rookies always want to hear all about the Strelok. I say _fuck_ Strelok! Everything got so much worse after him." The old man took a long pull from his bottle, coughed, continued, "I'll tell you something better than brave, stupid Strelok and his make-believe wishing machine. I will, and you should settle down, because it is a long story. And keep the vodka coming! That's the deal: I'll trade you a story for cigarettes and vodka."

The rookies laughed, but a couple went off to find more of both. The old man in the black protective suit went on.

"Strelok. He was one of the first, you know. Guide and Forester and Strelok, and myself. I was never part of any grouping, though, and I bet you don't even know my name. I like it that way. I came here to the Zone to make money, not to get famous like some kind of idiot. But anyway, I was talking about Strelok. In the old days, everyone knew about Strelok, and Fang, and Ghost, and Guide, and Doc. We all heard about how they could go anywhere, do anything. We all heard about how they found a way to the center of the Zone and came back alive, and how they all disappeared one by one after Strelok lost his brain and went back by himself. Then we all heard about the stalker with no name, the Marked One, the rookie who moved through the anomalies like an expert. We all heard about how he didn't even know his own name, but he knew he was supposed to kill Strelok. Then he finds out he _is_ Strelok, and he goes right back to the center of the Zone where he came from like a big idiot, and I'm sure he is dead this time. That's the most important lesson: The Zone takes what it wants, and in the end, the Zone will take us all.

"Things got worse after that. You see, when Strelok went back to the center, the Brain Scorcher—you children have been told about the Brain Scorcher, _da_?—the Brain Scorcher was powered down and the road into Pripyat was opened. Stalkers poured in from every corner of the Zone, knowing that there was an untouched bounty of artifacts lying right in front of them; and the military came, too, with their _spetsnaz_ and their big helicopter gunships; and when the Zone had all its eggs in one basket, the sky turned red and we all weathered the biggest blowout I've ever seen. Maybe they felt that blowout in Kiev. Maybe they felt that blowout in San Francisco. But anyway." He drank again.

"After things quieted down from the blowout, and everyone was heading north—you've never seen a grouping of stalkers like we had that day, everyone excited to get rich from the new artifacts, I swear there were Freedom men and Duty men and Mercs holding hands and skipping toward the center of the Zone. I don't know how many got through, or how many had already gotten through before the blowout, but I do know that the Zone has been a lot lonelier ever since the Brain Scorcher came back on. Do you know what a blowout does to a stalker? What the Brain Scorcher does to a stalker? Don't idolize the Strelok, children. Strelok made all our lives so much harder. But I said that I was going to tell you a better story, didn't I? A better story than any glory-chasing fools or make-believe wishing machines. So listen, little boys, and listen well . . ."


	2. Chapter 2

_II._

It all came down to a mistake, really. A simple mistake. A _rookie_ mistake.

They told him he was born for the Zone, that he could smell artifacts and anomalies, that bandits and Mercs and soldiers looked at him and saw right through him. They tried to call him Bloodhound, but he never answered to it, had no truck with posturing or superstition. He was never short on money . . . usually; but a few days ago he'd mailed off most of his wad to Olesya and the kids in Kiev. Most of his children were healthy—the Zone allow—but his two oldest were defectives, and taking care of them wasn't cheap, to say nothing of keeping food in the house, keeping the heat on in winter, and buying Olesya all the tacky gold jewelry and American clothes she loved so much. So he was broke; he'd barely had enough left over for a few boxes of ammunition and tins of food. The eggheads in Yantar always paid top dollar for anything they could get their hands on, mutant parts especially; so when he saw a bloodsuckers shining red eyes in the darkness as he moved that way through Rostock, it was like the Zone's own gift. The bloodsucker didn't notice him, and was apparently travelling toward Yantar itself; low on ammunition as he was, the stalker needed to follow and wait for a good, clean shot, not easy in the dark; but the mutant remained oblivious and, not wanting to prey upon groups of stalkers, led him around the Mercs and bandits as if he were following a tour guide. It was all too easy. He should've known that the Zone doesn't make things easy.

His big mistake was in being so eager for the kill that he forgot bloodusckers always—always—travel in a mating pair. If he hadn't been so excited, he might've noticed the female's red eyes when he turned around to check his six. But he didn't, and it cost.

He almost had his shot in the tunnel at the edge of the Wild Territory, but the monster set off one of the burners—he'd swear for the rest of his life that he saw its shimmering silhouette trip over its own feet—and the game of walking and waiting began again. The bloodsucker loped down the road into the Yantar area, stood upon the rim of the lake's basin, threw its arms up to the night sky, and howled. The stalker could've taken his shot then, but his instincts stopped him; he'd never seen a bloodsucker act this way before, and a bloodsucker only made its presence obvious the instant before a kill. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew something bad was on the wind.

And then the earth shook, and the sky turned red as blood. A loud, warbling claxton sounded from the mobile laboratory far below them. Blowout.

The bloodsucker darted down into the bushes out of sight, still howling. The stalker looked left, hopefully, toward the mobile lab; the eggheads were decent joes and would be happy to let him shelter in their bunker, maybe even gift him a meal and a shower. The basin was swarming with men—loners, soldiers, Freedom, Duty, Mercs, all mixed together—and they were all shambling toward the bunker, guns limp in their hands. That way was death. The research center over the hill had never looked less menacing; that, also, was death.

The stalker scurried into the bushes, on the trail of the bloodsucker, down the hill and into the culvert at its base. Not the best shelter, not the shelter he wanted, but it would keep him alive . . . the Zone allow. And he could hear the bloodsucker running about and howling, its cries echoing up and down the tunnel, so he would get his kill if nothing else. He leveled his Kalashnikov, crouched behind a bend in the culvert, and waited. Sure enough, the poor panicking monster scurried right by, desperately hoping the other end of the tunnel would be different this time— _Just like a cat_ , the stalker reflected—and didn't notice him. He put a hammered pair into the back of its head, cut the jawbone out of its face, and kicked back for a nap; the blowout would take care of any wayward monsters.

He woke to a sharp pain in his left arm and a horrible sucking sound in his ear. He felt weak. Turning his head, he found himself staring into the red eyes of a female bloodsucker . . . the second half of the mating pair. He screamed.

" _Bozhe miy!"_ he heard someone cry as his strength left him, "that idiot is alive!"

He passed out to the tattoo of rifle fire.


End file.
